THE DESOLATE MOUNTAIN FLOOR

 

1SG Robert M. Mayhew

 

The melancholy sentiment of time gone by pierces my heart like a cold shard of ice. The pace is now ever hastened as the hands of time blur, whirling ever faster, swiftly spinning out of control.

 

The youth of my children slipped away like sand between my aging fingers. The sweet perfume of their innocence wafted in the winds of time.

 

The light of their youth set behind the bulky immovable mountainous mass of my adulthood blocking out the gleeful, zestful rays of their young lives. Condemned to the cold dark shadow of the desolate mountain floor. Stagnant, rigid in its’ place.

 

Oh to once again relive the warmth of my children’s youth. The boundless, shapeless sunshine of their gleeful laughter and giddy antics, frolicking fully in the fields of their childhood. Unbridled by the stony hardness of age. Their dreams soaring high like the birds in flight. High, high above the cold clad crimson shackles down, down below. Flying weightless and free without highway or bends, without signs or clutter, unrestricted, floating, flying, following fabulous visions of fruitful endeavors and hopes that one day will be realized.

 

But to escape the tangled noose of time, the tortuous anchor of age, and the grim mold of assembly line adulthood which hammers and beats and hardens and contorts and convulses and hammers yet again until the wings of hopes and dreams are gone and our position of complacency is couched there, there among the rocks, on the cold dark side of the mountain in the shadow of age without flight, without warmth, without freedom or frolic.

 

Oh to be condemned to this wretched existence I forbid it, I forbid it! I will cast off the hammer and forbid the anvil and rid myself of this lot in life and this place in time and this manner of age. I shall. I shall!

 

Do you hear me hands of time? Hands spinning so swiftly. Hands mulching up life after precious life. With the warmth of the sun in my face I will again take flight with the flocks of dreams soaring high above me, free from the shackles, free from the molds, free to become, free to be, free. A flurry of energy without form or fashion, rich in creation and imagination. A free spirit kicking up my heals in a gleeful gallop with the warm wind of spring blowing through my hair.

 

Could it be? Can it be? Or is such little more than the dream of an old man, shackled by the complacency of age, among the rocks, to the cold dark shadow of the desolate mountain floor?

 

Fly!

 

Copyright © Robert M. Mayhew